2 Chronicles 4-7 The Temple Completed and Dedicated

we started second Chronicles last week we covered those first three chapters and so we're gonna see where it takes us here tonight Chronicles is a really interesting book not tremendously different from 1st and 2nd Kings but different enough primarily because it was written at a different time chronicles was written much much later than 1st and 2nd Kings and we believe that Ezra was the author of first and second Chronicles in the original Hebrew first and second chronicles are one continuous book we broke them up into two books for the study or to better study them and largely 1st and second chronicles deal with just the the line of David David was the second king of Israel Saul was the first King started off great ended very badly God said I'm gonna raise up a man after my own heart and that was David and and so first a second Chronicles chart the kings of Israel through the Davidic line or what we mean by that is from David's line or his descendants and toward the end of David's life it was his it was his deep desire to build a permanent temple for the Lord in Israel at that time the Ark of the the Covenant was and the Ark of the Covenant was built in the in the wilderness Moses had it built while the nation of Israel was wandering in the wilderness but the Ark of the Covenant was being kept at someone's house literally a guy by the name of abinadab and the the tabernacle which was a huge tent which the ark was supposed to be in was off at a different location and David longed very much to bring the worship of Israel back to the central place where the the people of israel could worship together that being jerusalem and he wanted very much to build the temple but the lord spoke to him and said you are not the one to do it i am going to have your son do it and and now israel since they are under a stable monarchy solomon now is on the throne the son of david and he is the one who is to build the temple in jerusalem i want to show you this evening if i could up on the screen a picture of it's kind of a cutaway picture of the temple and so i want to put this up on the screen for you you're gonna have to use your imagination a little bit here because we obviously don't have any you know pictures of it you know photographs there weren't such things and this is a drawing based on the measurements that are given to us in in the scripture but the temple itself resembled the tabernacle in a lot of ways and you'll notice that there are other things that are outside the temple and we're going to be talking about some of those things down in the kind of the center on the bottom is is a huge washing area for the priests you'll see a five wash kind of basins here on the lower left bottom those are for washing the sacrifices after the animals were slain you see on the far right hand side the altar where that's the altar of burnt-offering which was absolutely huge and then the temple itself you'll notice has kind of a cutaway view the large room in the front is what was referred to as the holy place and then the room in the back which is where the Ark of the Covenant would have been was called the most holy place or the Holy of Holies now almost everything took place outside in fact only the priests went into the holy place and they would go there twice a day just to burn incense and then as far as the most holy place was concerned or the Holy of Holies that was only entered once a year when the high priest would go in with the blood of the sacrificial animal and he would go in two times on the day of atonement first to sprinkle blood for his own sins and then he would go in sprinkle blood for the sins of all Israel and and so this was the the central place of worship and this is essentially what Solomon's Temple looked like so hopefully that that kind of helps as we talk about these things and maybe you'll be able to refer back to some of these pictures and now what I want to do also is put on the screen for you the chapters that I'm hoping to get through tonight which are chapters 4 through 7 and basically this is what they cover in chapter 4 Solomon will complete the construction of the temple in chapter 5 they will bring the ark and the other furnishings into the temple itself in chapter 6 Solomon will offer up a prayer of dedication a beautiful prayer and then in chapter 7 there will be an actual dedication celebration with the Lord then also speaking to Solomon and appearing to him as well so we're gonna do our best to cover these chapters tonight we'll see how far we actually get let's open up in prayer Heavenly Father is we take time to dig into the Old Testament tonight we pray that you would lead us we pray that you would guide us we pray that you would help us to understand these things from a New Testament perspective Lord we're not under the same covenant we're not under the law we're not under the same restrictions and commands that the Israelites were but even as we look through these things Lord we learn a great deal we learn a great deal about you we learn about how these things pointed toward a greater fulfillment down the road through the person Jesus Christ and we just learned a lot about history that helps us to understand the Bible so we pray tonight that you would help us to learn and help us to absorb the things that we were seeing here in these scriptures guide and direct our hearts we ask father in Jesus precious name Amen in Chapter three Solomon began the building of the temple and some of the things that went into the temple as we get into chapter four we're gonna see them beginning to build this big bronze altar that you saw that picture of it says he made an altar of bronze twenty cubits long and 20 cubits wide and ten cubits high so I want to remind you that a cubit is about a foot and a half so if something is said to be twenty cubits rather than doubling it you can you can take half of that and add to it so something that would have been twenty cubits long would be thirty feet long okay hopefully that works for you and you know what amber let's go ahead and just put that picture back up on the screen while I'm reading through these things maybe this will be a help for you and and again we're talking about the the bronze altar which is on the right side of your screen right below where it says Solomon's Temple and again this was a huge altar that they had to walk on steps to get up to and this is where the sacrificial animals were placed where they were burned where the aroma of those sacrifices ascended to the Lord but I want to remind you that most of the activity of the temple took place outside of the temple it didn't take place inside most everything happened outside verse two goes on to say then he made a sea of cast metal it was round ten cubits from brim to brim and that would be 15 feet all right and that is the the thing you see pictured at the very bottom of the screen he'll tell what they're for and a bit and it says it was five cubits high and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference so it was forty five feet across all right under it were figures of gourds so under the lip of it for ten cubits compass around the gourds were in two rows cast with it when it was cast and it stood on twelve oxen not real animals but the carvings of oxen three facing north three facing west three facing south and three facing east the sea or this big container was set on them and all their rear parts were inward so all these oxen are facing out alright its thickness was a hand breadth and a hand breadth is literally the width of a hand okay that's pretty easy to remember and its brim was made like the brim of a cup like the flower of a lily and it held three thousand baths now again this is something that we don't typically use most of us anyway but a bath was a measurement of about six gallons of liquid so you have three thousand of those you come up with 18,000 gallons of water that this thing held keep reading with me he also made ten basins in which to wash and set five on the south side and five on the north side and those are the small basins of that you see on one side of the the building and the others are mostly hidden on the other side of the building and it says let's see did it uh-oh in these they were to rinse off what was used for the burnt offerings and the sea was for the priests to wash in alright and it says he made ten golden lampstands as prescribed and set them in the temple this would be in the holy place five on the south side and five on the north and these lamp stands by the way were huge he also made 10 tables and placed them in the temple presumably for the bread of the presence 5 on the south side and 5 on the north and he made a hundred basins of gold your Bible if you have a different translation may say golden sprinkling bowls or just golden bowls and we assume that they were used for sprinkling of blood and it says in verse 9 he made the court of the priests and the great court and doors for the court and overlaid the doors with bronze now when you look at that picture you don't see the court well you do but you don't see it encompassed by anything you just see kind of some brickwork on the floor there but what you're seeing there that court that was closest to the temple was called the courtyard of the priests and and it was really only the priests who would normally get to go in there now during the dedication ceremony other people were allowed but after this it's really just the priests and and by the way if you have kind of a Roman Catholic background and you're thinking of priests as it relates to you know the people who minister in kind of aspect get that out of your head because the the the the the Jewish priests were completely different they were an entire family line that came from one of the tribes of Israel the tribe of Levi and all who were descended from Levi were considered to be priests in order to be a high priest you had to be a descendant a direct descendant of Aaron's excuse me of Moses's brother Aaron so you have the arianna priests and you have the Levitical priests and it was the Levitical priests who would be involved in helping with all of these things and it was the arianna priests who had actually sprinkled the blood and go into the Holy of Holies and there was only one high priest at a time so this this area that you're seeing there would be the the courtyard of the priests then there would be a wall around that courtyard and outside of that would be the general courtyard or what is referred to as the outer courts and the outer courts was huge it was an enormous area and it included places for women it included places for Gentiles there were different needs or you know concerns that would be taken care of by this outer court and by the way it was in the outer court that Jesus came in seeing people buying and selling there that he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and drove their animals out of that area because they were actually buying and selling in a corner of the outer court that was reserved for Gentiles and that was as the only place Gentiles could go they couldn't go any closer than that outer court area and the little corner that had been designated for them and the Jews were using it to buy and sell they turned it into a marketplace and and Jesus was quite incensed with that whole process and he drove them out on two separate occasions saying this is to be a place of Prayer and you've turned it into a den of thieves and because there was a lot of cheating going on in that area so anyway it goes on now and verse 10 if you look with me and it says and he set the sea which is the the the huge washing basin at the bottom of the screen there at the southeast corner of the house and here house is a word used for the temple structure Hyrum also made the pots the shovels in the basins so Hiram finished the work that he did for King Solomon on the house of God the two pillars the bowls and the two capitals on the top of the pillars and the two lattice works to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on the top of the pillars and the 400 pomegranates for the two lattice works two rows of pompom a Granite's for each lattice work to cover the two bowls of the Kappa that were on the pillars so this thing was very ornate and we talked about last week how pomegranates in the Middle East were very popular fruit and they used carvings of pomegranates to in their decorations verse 14 he made the stands also and the basins on the stands and the ones see and the twelve oxen underneath it the pots the shovels the forks and all the equipment for these haram a being made of burnished bronze for King Solomon for the house of the Lord in the plain of the Jordan that king cast them in the clay ground between sakkath and Zahra da Solomon made all these things in great quantities for the weight of the bronze was not sought and that's just simply a way of saying that no one set to figure out how much was used because bronze was so common they didn't really care alright verse nineteen so Solomon made all the vessels that were in the house of God and then he begins to mention them the golden altar now the golden altar can we see the golden altar in there well it would have been you see the stairs that are kind of leading to the into the most holy place in the back of the building I don't know that there actually were stairs but there was there was a door a doorway which was always open and then a veil that hung between the holy place in the most holy place but there would have also been an altar right outside that door in the holy place right before you go into the most holy place but it was not an altar that animals would were sacrificed upon it was an altar that incense was burned on and that's what the priests did daily to go in and burn incense fact you'll remember that when John the Baptist's father received a vision an angelic vision saying that his wife was going to have a son and he was to name him John he was actually in the temple burning incense because he was on duty and he was the only one in there because he was of the Levitical priest li line and John the Baptist's father was in doing this work saw this angel and then came out and of course you remember he had motion with his hands because his ability to speak had been taken away because he didn't believe what he saw but he would have been burning incense on that altar right in front of the veil that went into the most holy place we're also told at the end of verse 19 that the tables for the bread of the presence the lamp stands in their lamps of pure gold to burn before the inner sanctuary is prescribed the flowers the lamps the tongs of purest gold the snuffer's meaning to snuff out the lamp stands basins dishes for incense and fire pans of pure gold and the sockets of the temple for the inner doors to the most holy place and for the doors of the nave or the holy place of the temple were of gold must have been amazing can you imagine walking in a room and most everything is gold the walls are gold the floor is gold the doors are gold and it's just crazy so but you'll remember gold was very common during Solomon's reign and so we go on to chapter 5 and it says thus all the work that Solomon did for the house of the Lord was finished and Solomon brought in the things that David his father had dedicated and stored the silver the gold and all the vessels in the Treasuries of the house of God and then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes the leaders of the father's houses of the people of Israel in Jerusalem to bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord out of the City of David which is tsiyon and all the men of Israel assembled before the king at the feast that is in the seventh month now this is the Feast of Tabernacles by the way there there were actually three feasts that happened in the seventh month of the year but we happen to know based on when this thing ended that it was the Feast of Tabernacles so this is a feast that would normally bring people into the city anyway to celebrate it but Solomon is inviting them in now for an added time of celebration because the Ark is being brought into the completed temple so what's move on verse 4 and all the elders of Israel came and the Levites took up the ark and they brought up the ark the tent of meeting and all the holy vessels that were in the tent the Levitical priests brought them up and King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel who had assembled before him were before the ark sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered then the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to its place in the inner sanctuary of the house in the most holy place underneath the wings of the cherubim the cherubim which are angels and these are carvings of angels spread out their wings over the place of the ark so that the cherubim made it covering above the ark and its poles and the poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place before the inner sanctuary but they could not be seen from outside and they are there to this day now that's an interesting statement Ezra says they are there to this day he doesn't say the ark is there but he says the poles are there to this day and it is possible you see we believe that the Ark of the Covenant was lost by the time Ezra wrote these things down so there wouldn't have been any Ark of the Covenant in the temple any longer Ezra lived in a time when the two in the temple got rebuilt after it had been destroyed okay Solomon's Temple was destroyed so Ezra lived at a time when a new less glorious temple was built it's referred to as Zuri bubbles temple and it is possible that they actually staged these poles kind of sticking out from the holy place as it looked before but again there was no Ark all right because we believed that it had been lost by that time and it had never been remade verse 10 there was nothing in the Ark except the two tablets that Moses put there at Horeb where the Lord made a covenant with the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt now some of you might be thinking wait a minute I remember my Old Testament there was more in the Ark than just two tablets there was also supposed to be a jar of manna and there was also supposed to be a staff that belonged to Aaron that miraculously budded to show that he was God's chosen man for the high priesthood where were they well they'd been lost remember there's been years and years the ark has been stolen in the meantime the Philistines had it for a period of about I think it was about seven months or so and you know it who knows things could have been taken out at this point in time only the the the the Ten Commandments on two tablets were there in the Ark verse 11 and when the priests came out of the holy place for all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves without regard to their divisions and all the Levitical singers Asaph Heymann and Jeddah 'then their sons and kinsmen arrayed in fine linen with cymbals harps and Liars stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord and when the song was raised with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments in praise to the Lord for he is good for his steadfast love endures forever it tells us that the house of the the house the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud so that the priests could not stand to Minister before the cloud for the glory of the Lord build the house of God this is God's Way of communicating to the people of Israel that he had accepted the temple that they had purchased that they'd built rather and that they that his spirit was going to take up residence in this temple in a very real and genuine sort of a way but when the presence of the Lord came into the temple it says that the priest couldn't minister they couldn't go in there and do their work they had to leave the temple precincts because the presence of the Lord was so thick it's interesting isn't it when you think about the presence of the Lord what do you think about you know we have different pictures I suppose in our mind about what the presence of the Lord is like what being in the presence of the Lord by the way the Jews came to refer to this kind of almost tangible prayer well not almost this tangible presence of the Lord as the Shekinah glory it's not a biblical word but it's a word that comes from kind of an old Hebrew that makes reference to the the presence of the Lord dwelling or settling upon something or someone and it was a word that they would use to describe this sort of a thing this this the Shekinah glory was first seen when the Israelites were coming out of Egypt and the the the presence of the Lord went with them in the form of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night this is the Shekinah glory the resting glory the settling glory if you will of the Lord but interesting isn't it that this this this presence of the Lord is described I think I think of the Mount of Transfiguration in the New Testament when Jesus took Peter James and John up upon up to the mountaintop and there it says that a cloud just began to envelop them and you know obviously the presence of the Lord and and in the case of Peter James and John they were all kind of and eyes were heavy but when they kind of came to themselves they began to see what was going on and they saw Jesus glorified magnified as the presence of the Lord filled that that area and so forth but it's interesting to think about the presence of the Lord isn't it as I said I think we each kind of have a different sort of a description of what that might be have you ever felt the presence of the Lord I'm not necessarily suggesting that it's a feeling because we have to be careful to not to make things all about feelings because then then you know if I feel good then God's with me and if I don't feel good he's not with me the fact of the matter is the Bible says that God's God's in direct presence is with us all the time but there is something about this tangible Shekinah glory you know that is different from what you and I might otherwise describe as you know just the presence of God that is with us at all times I think as Christians we have underrated the presence of God I think we have minimized what it is to focus on the presence of the Lord and I think one of the reasons is we just we're so easily distractible but you know we come together as a body even like we did tonight to to worship we do it on a Sunday morning as well we come to to worship and you guys know that one of the reasons we turn the lights down in here is to minimize distractions it's not to focus people on what's happening up here it's to help people focus on the Lord because you know people are coming in and they're moving around and taking their coats off and this and that and and we just try to minimize that because we want people to be focused on the presence of the Lord but how often do we come into a church service when we're worshiping the Lord together as the body by the way where God promises his presence in a very special way Jesus says wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name there I am among you and so forth how how conscious are we of the presence of the Lord are we are we thinking about it are we are we are we tuning in if you will because the presence of the Lord is not something that we're going to understand intellectually it's not something that we're going to understand with our five senses necessarily we're going to key in on the presence of the Lord spiritually and and that right there takes most of us and just kind of like do we just we're like spiritually how in the world do I understand something spiritually I mean you know we're just not used to doing this but the fact is when we come to Christ our spirits are made alive we are literally born again by the spirit the Holy Spirit gives us new birth and and and we now have a connecting point with God through our spirit and Christians who want to continue to connect with him on a physical level our shortchanging themselves if guy wish God would just speak to me you know he is speaking but you know God wants to speak spiritually he wants to talk and by the way do you know that when God speaks to us spiritually it's it transcends the spoken word by leaps and bounds God can communicate something to us in on a spiritual level that would he can do it in a fraction of a second that would otherwise take an hour to communicate verbally because spiritually it just contains there's so much more to the spirit realm you and I have to wait for words you know when I speak a sentence to you you have to wait typically from the beginning of the sentence to the end of the sentence to know what I've said and then I take a breath and I say another sentence and you have to wait till the end it's not it's not the way it is spiritually thoughts and whole ideas can be communicated in a fraction of a second and we just we just know we just know because we are spiritually connected you know remember what Jesus said to the woman at the well in Samaria as he's sitting there talking to this woman she wants to argue about whether you know it was proper or best to worship in Jerusalem or there on the mountain in Samaria and and Jesus says to her you know he says the time is coming in fact it's now here when it doesn't matter whether you worship in Jerusalem or whether you worship on this mountain or anywhere else because here's what God is looking for he's looking for people who worship in spirit in spirit and in truth so what does it mean to worship in spirit what does it mean to be aware of the presence the spiritual presence of God and as Christians do we spend any time trying to key into God's presence I dare say we spend very little time we are so keyed in to our five senses things I can see hear taste feel smell right I am so keyed in on these things that this whole spiritual dynamic is just left in the dust it's like spiritually or you get really how do I listen spiritually you know well it's a it's a sixth sense believe me and it Trump's all of the others it's it's better more effective than all of the other senses that you have and God wants you and I to practice focusing on his presence learning what it means to worship in spirit because you know if you're worshiping in spirit then it doesn't really matter what you're doing physically we get so bound up on physical things you know do you like to stand up or sit down when you worship who cares you know well do you guys you know I think real worship is raising your hands that's what real clapping your hands that's real worship dancing that's real it's physical Jesus didn't say I'm looking for physical worshipers I'm looking for people who were worship in spirit and in truth and we get all hung up I don't like drums in church yeah drums I just bother me that's a physical thing get over it you know in Israel man if you didn't like drums you wouldn't like their worship either I mean they were into percussion believe you you know with cymbals and all these other instruments you know anyway we get so high centered on those things you know and we think that's worship you know it's not it's just an expression of worship but it's not the thing itself it's not worship itself worship is worship in spirit recognizing the presence of God Lord you're here you're here you know you promised that you would be here I believe that you're gonna be here and even though I'm having a hard time getting past the guy behind me to Rose who's singing loud not key and this gals perfume over here that's burning my sinuses you know I mean there are things that distract us right I'm going to focus in on your presence I'm gonna learn to focus on your presence it's so important you guys Chapter six then Solomon said the Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness but I have built you an exalted house a place for you to dwell in forever then the king turned around and blessed all the Assembly of Israel while all the Assembly of Israel stood and he said blessed be the Lord the God of Israel who was with who with his hand has fulfilled what he promised with his mouth to David my father saying since the day that I brought my people out of the land of Egypt I chose no city out of all the tribes of Israel in which to build a house that my name might be there and I chose no man as Prince over my people Israel but I have in Jerusalem that my name may be there and I have chosen David to be over my people Israel now it was in the heart of David my father to build a house for the name of the Lord the God of Israel but the Lord said to David my father whereas it was in your heart to build a house for my name you did well that it was in your heart nevertheless it is not you who shall build the house but your son who shall be born to you shall build the house for my name now the Lord has fulfilled his promise that he made for I have risen in the place of David my father and sit on the throne of Israel as the Lord promised and I have built the house for the name of the Lord the God of Israel and there I have set the ark in which is the Covenant of the Lord that he made with the people of Israel then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the Assembly of Israel and spread out his hands Solomon had made a bronze platform five cubits long five cubits wide and three cubits high and it said it in the court and he stood on it and then he knelt on his knees in the presence of all the Assembly of Israel and spread out his hands toward heaven and he said O Lord God of Israel there is no god like you in heaven or on earth keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their heart who have kept with your servant David my father what you declared to him you spoke with your mouth and with your hand have fulfilled it to this day now therefore O Lord God of Israel keep for your servant David my father what you have promised him saying you shall not lack a man to sit before me on the throne of Israel if only your sons pay close attention to their walk or excuse me to their way to walk in my law as you have walked before me now therefore O Lord God of Israel let the your word be confirmed which you have spoken to your servant David but will God indeed dwell with man on the earth behold heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you how much less this house that I have built yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea o Lord my god listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you that your eyes may be open day and night toward this house the place where you've promised to set your name and that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place and listen to the pleas of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray check this phrase toward this place and listen from heaven your dwelling place and when you hear forgive now did you catch that Solomon is praying he's saying Lord he says listen I know that there's no house there's no temple on earth that can possibly contain you you are God you are the Lord God who created heaven and earth and I get it this temple is not your home however you have chosen to allow your presence to be here in a manifest way so I'm asking you when people pray whether here at this temple or toward this temple meaning they're not here in Jerusalem but they're praying toward the temple here listen to what your servants have to say and now what he does beginning in verse 22 is he begins to give some examples of how people might pray either at or toward the temple he says in verse 22 if a man sins against his neighbor and is made to take an oath and comes and swears his oath before your altar in this house then hear from heaven and act and judge your servants repaying the guilty by bringing his conduct on his own head and vindicating the righteous by rewarding him according to his righteousness if your people Israel are defeated before the enemy because they have sinned against you and they turn and acknowledge your name and pray and plead with you in this house then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them again to the land that you gave to them and to their fathers and when heaven is shut up and there is no rain but as they have sinned against you and look at this if they pray toward this place and acknowledge your name and turn from their sin when you afflict them then here in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants your people Israel when you teach them the good way in which they should walk and grant rain upon your land which you have given to your people as an inheritance if there's a famine in the land if there is a pestilence or blight or mildew or locusts or caterpillar those are all things that would ruin crops if you're their enemies besieged them in the land at their gates whatever plague whatever sickness there is whatever prayer whatever plea is made by any man or by all your people Israel each knowing his own affliction and his own sorrow and stretching out his hands toward this house then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive and render to each whose heart you know according to all his ways for you you only you only know the hearts of the children of mankind that they may fear you and walk in your ways all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our fathers likewise when a foreigner who is not of your people Israel comes from a far country for the sake of your great name in your mighty hand and your outstretched arm when he comes in praise toward this house hear from heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you as do your people Israel and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name and if your people go out to battle against their enemies by whatever way you shall send them and they pray to you toward this city that you've chosen in the house that I've built for your name then hear from heaven their prayer and their plea and maintain their cause and if they sin against you for there is no one who does not sin and if you are angry with them and give them to an enemy so that they are carried away captive to a land far or near yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they've been carried captive and repent and plead with you in the land of their captivity saying we have sinned and acted perversely and wickedly if they repent with all their mind and with all their heart in the land of their captivity to which they were carried captive and pray toward their land which you gave to their father's ass is the city that you have chosen and the house that I built for your name then hear from heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their pleas and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you stop there for just a moment notice that Solomon even includes sins that are so Grievous by the people of Israel that they are conquered by an enemy and carried captive off into another land and we know that that actually happened we know that that happened about about 500 ish years from when Solomon is saying this a little bit less and Daniel knew this scripture by the way the temple had been destroyed he knew that - but Daniel knew this scripture and everyday at the time of Prayer Daniel would open his window in his room and he'd faced Jerusalem and he would pray and he would he would repent for the whole nation of Israel and he would say God restore your people that is how David's fellow wise men in the kingdom of Persia knew that Daniel prayed to the Lord God and that is how they attempted to get him into trouble you'll remember they tried to find something against Daniel and they couldn't because he was a righteous man and so they went to the king with this bogus thing saying well King we think it'd be a good idea if you created a rule so that for the next anybody who prays to any other God except you will be thrown into the den of lions and the king being a prideful sort of a guy said no that's a good idea and so he made a you know idea and and they and and so Daniel hears about this to anybody who's seen praying to any other god but the king will be thrown into the the the lion's den so what does Daniel do three times a day opens up the window to his room faces Jerusalem and praise O Lord God I repent for the sins of my people restore your people Israel one day to their homeland and he just continues to pray but he's doing it because Solomon he remembers this he knows this that Solomon besought the Lord and said if anyone prays here from heaven and respond it's really a it's really kind of a beautiful story verse 40 goes on and it says now oh my god let your eyes be open in your ears attentive to the prayer of this place and now arise O Lord and go to your resting place you and the Ark of your might let your priests O Lord God be clothed with salvation and let your saints rejoice in your goodness O Lord God do not turn away the face of your Anointed One remember your steadfast love for David your servant and it says as soon as Solomon finished his prayer fire literally came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices and the glory of the Lord filled the temple and the priests could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's house in that cool here's what's really cool we see that fire came from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and we also know from a New Testament perspective that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit right right in the Old Testament it was a building in the New Testament what is the church I had a girl come up to me recently and say I want to get married in a church and I say well this isn't a church this is just a building we're the church you know I know I know you know what I mean well you know we we got the terminology all wrong right a building isn't the church people are the church you are in fact the Bible says a temple of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost what was seen above each of the heads of the believers who were gathered together when the Holy Spirit fell upon those assembled believers it says strange little tongues of fire was seen literally above their heads it's the same picture you guys it's this transfer of understanding from the temple as a building to the temple as a person you are a temple of the holy spirit designated that by this fire that settled over the heads of these first believers upon whom the spirit fell and it's a picture pointing back here to second chronicles chapter 7 and it says when all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord saying for he is good for his steadfast love and doers forever and then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the Lord King Solomon offered as a sacrifice twenty-two thousand oxen and 120 thousand sheep that's crazy so the king and all the people dedicated the house of God and the priest stood at their posts the Levites also with the instruments for music to the Lord that King David had made for giving thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love endures forever whenever David offered praises by their ministry opposite them the priests sounded trumpets and all Israel stood and Solomon consecrated the middle of the court that was before the house of the Lord for there he offered the burnt offering and the fat of the peace offering because the bronze altar Solomon had made couldn't hold all the burnt offerings and the grain offering and the fat and and that basically is another way of saying Solomon had to come up with another altar because there was too many offerings going on and they couldn't keep it all going on one place so they kind of consecrated a second offering spot and at that time Solomon held the feast for seven days in all Israel with him a very great assembly from lamothe to the brook of Egypt and that's a way of just saying the widest extent of Israel's borders people came from everywhere that's what it's saying and on the eighth day they held a solemn assembly for they had kept the dedication of the altar seven days and the Feast presumably here again the Feast of Tabernacles seven days and on the 23rd day of the seventh month he sent the people away to their homes joyful and glad of heart for the prosperity that the Lord had granted to David and to Solomon and to the end to Israel his people thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king's house and all that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house he successfully accomplished then sometime after this the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice when I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locusts to devour the land or send pestilence among my people if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place for now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever my eyes and my heart will be there for all time and as for you if you walk before me as David your father walked doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules then I will establish your royal throne as I covenant 'add with David your father saying you shall not lack a man to rule Israel but if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my Commandments that I've set before you and go and serve other gods and worship them then I will pluck you up from the land that I've given you and this house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast you out of my sight and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples and at this house which was exalted everyone passing by will be astonished and say why is the Lord done thus to the land to this land into this house and then they will say because they abandoned the Lord the god of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them therefore he has brought all this disaster on them I want to call your attention just as we close here to verse 14 again it's a very popular verse you hear it quoted a lot if my people who are called by my name and I have a tendency to believe that that is a word for all time for all of God's people who are called by his name and that would include the church he goes on to say if they do four things notice what they are let me put these up on the screen for you here - because it's good - we see him he says if they first of all humbled themselves second of all if they pray if they'll just pray and next if they will seek my face you know to seek God that means to look to search to run after him to spend time you know how it is are you the kind of person I I have a hard time losing things what I mean by that is if I lose something I like can't move on until I find it you know and I'll turn in a room upside down until I find it you know yeah lose this dumb every time my grandkids come over we lose the remote to the TV like every time and I've learned now that it falls under the couch and that's just where I'm gonna find it but until I kind of learned that I was like yeah no you know I I'm one of those people who just can't walk over to the TV and hit the button you know so you know and I'll just do everything I could but that's kind of what seeking the Lord means it means I'm gonna turn this thing upside down all right you know until I find the Lord I am going to seek Him until I know that I know that I know we have Matt you know that's what he's talking about there and then fourthly he says if they will turn from their wicked ways or turn from their sin then God says this is what I'll do I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin now he goes on to say I will heal their land now you got to understand we don't have a land covenant with God okay now Israel did they had a physical land covenant we don't that doesn't mean God won't bless our land you know if if we're walking in a in an attitude of you know worship and so forth with God it doesn't mean that I think he will but we we don't we still don't have a physical covenant with God ours is a spiritual covenant all right so but I think there are still there's enough things in this passage in this verse that shows great insight into you know how we turn you know he says even after all these things happen if you will humble yourselves if you'll pray if you'll seek my face and if you'll turn from your old ways and turn it to me then I will I'll be attentive to your prayer you

Channel: Calvary Chapel Ontario

Views: 17,989

Rating: 4.7777777 out of 5

Keywords: Bible, Bible teaching, Thru-the-Bible, verse by verse, Calvary Chapel, Bible study, Christianity, New Testament, Old Testament, King Solomon, Solomon's Temple, Dedicating the Temple

Id: afGnxwX_FBI

Length: 55min 13sec (3313 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2018